I've realized that immigration is a hot topic here, and as this is a forum about Italy it is always consistent to talk about it.
Thousands of Italians and other people traveled to the US, landing on Ellis Island, but how was the greeting?

Most immigrants to the U.S. had to work long hard hours in horrible conditions. To say they were overworked
and underpaid is an understatement. Many immigrant children worked right along with the adults in sweatshops with poor
ventilation and under very hazardous conditions. We're talking about more than 14 hour work a day for 6 freaking days a week.
All this in the great country of America (someone wants to tell us how it really wasn't
that bad?)

But before all this our immigrant relatives had to go through Ellis Island and receive a grand welcome to America:


Ellis Island, is the location of what was at one time the main entry facility for immigrants entering the United States;
the facility operated from January 1, 1892, until November 12, 1954. It is owned by the Federal government and is now part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, under the jurisdiction of the US National Park Service. It is situated in
Jersey City, New Jersey and New York City.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. - Engraved on Statue of Liberty"

"A Den of Thieves ran Ellis Island!"

As gracious as the receiving station on Ellis Island appeared on the outside, its insides were riddled with graft, corruptionand cruelty for many years. Inspectors demanded bribes from immigrants who appeared to have money; if the bribe was questioned, or slow in coming, an immigrant was detained. Other inspectors would admit pretty young women on the condition that the women meet them later at a hotel. Railroad agents sold tickets at inflated prices. Immigrants were compelled to buy box lunches they didn't want for many times their value. Employees at the Money Exchange simply lied about the exchange rates and then pocketed the difference.

Some American immigration inspectors were discovered issuing fake certificates of citizenship for a fee and splitting the profits with ship officers.

Of course all this is never mentioned in the American history books.

Here's some of the sources:
http://www.immigrantsinusa.blogspot....or-working.htm
http://www.clas.berkeley.edu:7001/Ou...003/index.html
http://www.megaessays.com/essay_sear...mmigrants.html

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....our treatment to immigrants is not very different....

Gee, I wonder how many of those "Americans" were of Italian dissent? This is still going on around the world, look at Palestine and Israel.
Ciao,

Wow! I had no idea. As a immigrant to the U.S and Canada, I always wondered how it things had been in the past. I figured that the new comers had to put up with hard ships. I knew about child labor and the poor living conditions. But I had no idea the extent of it. I can say that things have improved quite a bit. However, those immigrant who come to the country not knowing the language, still have to put up with a lot. Personally I have witnessed and have had the experience of dealing with crooked immigration attorneys. Since I spoke English, it did not take me too long to figure out what was going on. However I have had countless friends that were robbed by immigration attorneys pretending to be pursuing green cards and such. It is sad to see that in the 21st century, this still continues. however it is also good to know that compared to the past things have improved much.

[QUOTE=Multicultural lady;13258]Wow! I had no idea.

Neither did most of us.

Just a few of the higlights of the American History we
were never taught in school:

Warning, the following is a very brutal but true story of American History.

3 July 1835
Children employed in the silk mills in Paterson, NJ went on strike for the 11 hour day/6 day week.

July 1851
Two railroad strikers were shot dead and others injured by the state militia in Portgage, New York.

1860
800 women operatives and 4,000 workmen marched during a shoemaker's strike in Lynn, Massachusetts.

13 January 1874
The original Tompkins Square Riot. As unemployed workers demonstrated in New York's Tompkins Square Park, a detachment
of mounted police charged into the crowd, beating men, women and children indiscriminately with billy clubs and leaving
hundreds of casualties in their wake. Commented Abram Duryee, the Commissioner of Police: "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw..."

21 June 1877
Ten coal-mining activists ("Molly Maguires") were hanged in Pennsylvania.

14 July 1877
A general strike halted the movement of U.S. railroads. In the following days, strike riots spread across the United States.
The next week, federal troops were called out to force an end to the nationwide strike. At the "Battle of the Viaduct" in
Chicago, federal troops (recently returned from an Indian massacre) killed 30 workers and wounded over 100.

25 July 1890
New York garment workers won the right to unionize after a seven-month strike. They secured agreements for a closed shop, and firing of all scabs.

5 July 1893
During a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company, which had drastically reduced wages, the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition
in Chicago's Jackson Park was set ablaze, and seven buildings were reduced to ashes. The mobs raged on, burning and looting railroad
cars and fighting police in the streets, until 10 July, when 14,000 federal and state troops finally succeeded in putting down the strike.

1894
Federal troops killed 34 American Railway Union members in the Chicago area attempting to break a strike, led by Eugene Debs,
against the Pullman Company. Debs and several others were imprisoned for violating injunctions, causing disintegration of the union.

10 September 1897
19 unarmed striking coal miners and mine workers were killed and 36 wounded by a posse organized by the Luzerne County sherif
for refusing to disperse near Lattimer, Pennsylvania. The strikers, most of whom were shot in the back, were originally
brought in as strike-breakers, but later organized themselves.

July 1903
Labor organizer Mary Harris ("Mother") Jones leads child workers in demanding a 55 hour work week.

23 February 1904
William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle began publishing articles on the menace of Japanese laborers,
leading to a resolution of the California Legislature that action be taken against their immigration.

8 June 1904
A battle between the Colorado Militia and striking miners at Dunnville ended with six union members dead
and 15 taken prisoner. Seventy-nine of the strikers were deported to Kansas two days later.

22 November 1909
The "Uprising of the 20,000." Female garment workers went on strike in New York; many were arrested.
A judge told those arrested: "You are on strike against God."

25 March 1911
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, occupying the top three floors of a ten-story building in New York City, was consumed by fire.
One hundred and forty-seven people, mostly Italian women and young girls working in sweatshop conditions, lost their lives.
Approximately 50 died as they leapt from windows to the street; the others were burned or trampled to death as they desperately
attempted to escape through stairway exits locked as a precaution against "the interruption of work".
On 11 April the company's owners were indicted for manslaughter.

24 February 1912
Women and children were beaten by police during a textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. 11 June 191?
Police shot three maritime workers (one of whom was killed) who were striking against the United Fruit Company in New Orleans.

5 January 1914
The Ford Motor Company raised its basic wage from $2.40 for a nine hour day to $5 for an eight hour day.

20 April 1914
The "Ludlow Massacre." In an attempt to persuade strikers at Colorado's Ludlow Mine Field to return to work, company "guards,"
engaged by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and other mine operators and sworn into the State Militia just for the occasion, attacked
a union tent camp with machine guns, then set it afire. Five men, two women and 12 children died as a result. Additional web
resources are catolged at www.holtlaborlibrary.org/ludlow.html#Web%20Sites.

19 January 1915
World famous labor leader Joe Hill was arrested in Salt Lake City. He was convicted on trumped up murder charges, and was executed
21 months later despite worldwide protests and two attempts to intervene by President Woodrow Wilson. In a letter to Bill Haywood
shortly before his death he penned the famous words, "Don't mourn - organize!"

On this same day, twenty rioting strikers were shot by factory guards at Roosevelt, New Jersey.

25 January 1915
The Supreme Court upholds "yellow dog" contracts, which forbid membership in labor unions. 22 July 1916
A bomb was set off during a "Preparedness Day" parade in San Francisco, killing 10 and injuring 40 more.
Thomas J. Mooney, a labor organizer and Warren K. Billings, a shoe worker, were convicted, but were both pardoned in 1939.

An Eclectic List of Events in U.S. Labor HistoryChronology of labor struggles in the US starting with the Philadelphia
Journeymen Cordwainers conviction in 1806, and subsequent battles with the government ...
www.lutins.org/labor.html - 32k - Cached - Similar pages

1920 and 1921
Army troops were used to intervene against striking mineworkers in West Virginia. Details of these events can be found in the extensive and excellent article at http://www.wvculture.org/history/jou...h/wvh50-1.html.

22 June 1922
Violence erupted during a coal-mine strike at Herrin, Illinois. Thirty-six were killed, 21 of them non-union miners.

2 June 1924
A child labor ammendment to the U.S. Constitution was proposed; only 28 of the necessary 36 states ever ratified it.

14 June 1924
A San Pedro, California IWW hall was raided; a number of children were scalded when the hall was demolished.

25 May 1925
Two company houses occupied by nonunion coal miners were blown up and destroyed by labor "racketeers" during a strike against the Glendale Gas and Coal Company in Wheeling, West Virginia.

1926
Textile workers fought with police in Passaic, New Jersey. A year-long strike ensued.

21 November 1927
Picketing miners were massacred in Columbine, Colorado.

3 February 1930
"Chicagorillas" -- labor racketeers -- shot and killed contractor William Healy, with whom the Chicago Marble Setters Union had been having difficulties.

14 April 1930
Over 100 farm workers were arrested for their unionizing activities in Imperial Valley, California. Eight were subsequently convicted of `criminal syndicalism.'

4 May 1931
Gun-toting vigilantes attack striking miners in Harlan County, Kentucky.

7 March 1932
Police kill striking workers at Ford's Dearborn, Michigan plant.

10 October 1933
18,000 cotton workers went on strikein Pixley, California. Four were killed before a pay-hike was finally won.

1934
The Electric Auto-Lite Strike. In Toledo, OH, two strikers were killed and over two hundred wounded by National Guardsmen. Some 1300 National Guard troops, including included eight rifle companies and three machine gun companies, were called in to disperse the protestors.

1934
International Longshoremans and Warehouse union strike of 1934. Two longshoremen, Nick Bordoise and Howard Sperry, were shot to death by the San Francisco Police. May 1934
Police stormed striking truck drivers in Minneapolis who were attempting to prevent truck movement in the market area.

1 September - 22 September 1934
A strike in Woonsocket, RI, part of a national movement to obtain a minimum wage for textile workers, resulted in the deaths of three workers. Over 420,000 workers ultimately went on strike.

9 November 1935
The Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) was formed to expand industrial unionism.

11 February 1937
General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers union following a sit-down strike.

26 May 1937
The 'Battle of the Overpass'. Walter Reuther and a group of UAW supporters, fresh from having organized GM and Chyrsler, attempting to distribute leaflets at Gate 4 of the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge plant, and were beaten up (together with bystanders) by Ford Service Department guards.

30 May 1937
Police killed 10 and wounded 30 during the "Memorial Day Massacre" at the Republic Steel plant in Chicago.

25 June 1938
The Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) Act is passed, banning child labor and setting the 40-hour work week. The Act went into effect in October 1940, and was upheld in the Supreme Court on 3 February 1941.

27 February 1939
The Supreme Court rules that sit-down strikes are illegal.

20 June 1941
Henry Ford recognizes the UAW.

15 December 1941
The AFL pledges that there will be no strikes in defense-related industry plants for the duration of the war.

28 December 1944
President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Army to seize the executive offices of Montgomery Ward and Company after the corporation failed to comply with a National War Labor Board directive regarding union shops.



1946
Workers in packinghouses nation-wide went on strike.

1 April 1946
A strike by 400,000 mine workers in the U.S. began. U.S. troops seized railroads and coal mines the following month.

4 October 1946
The U.S. Navy seized oil refineries in order to break a 20-state post-war strike.

20 June 1947
The Taft-Hartley Labor Act, curbing strikes, was vetoed by President Truman. Congress overrode the veto.

20 April 1948
Labor leader Walter Reuther was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins.

27 August 1950
President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize all the nation's railroads to prevent a general strike. The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years later.

8 April 1952
President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize the nation's steel mills to avert a strike. The act was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court on 2 June.

5 December 1955
The two largest labor organizations in the U.S. merged to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million.

5 April 1956
Columnist Victor Riesel, a crusader against labor racketeers, was blinded in New York City when a hired assailant threw sulfuric acid in his face.

14 September 1959
The Landrum-Griffin Act passes, restricting union activity.

7 November 1959
The Taft-Hartley Act is invoked by the Supreme Court to break a steel strike.

1 April 1963
The longest newspaper strike in U.S. history ended. The 9 major newspapers in New York City had ceased publication over 100 days before.

10 June 1963
Congress passes a law mandating equal pay to women.

5 January 1970
Joseph A. Yablonski, unsuccessful reform candidate to unseat "Tough Tony" Boyle as President of the United Mine Workers, was murdered, along with his wife and daughter, in their Clarksville, Pennsylvania home by assassins acting on Boyle's orders. Boyle was later convicted of the killing. West Virginia miners went on strike the following day in protest.

18 March 1970
The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Post Office Department began with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, soon involving 210,000 of the nation's 750,000 postal employees. With mail service virtually paralzyed in New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia, President Nixon declared a state of national emergency and assigned military units to New York City post offices. The stand-off culminated two weeks later.

29 July 1970
United Farm Workers forced California grape growers to sign an agreement after a five-year strike.

3 August 1981
Federal air traffic controllers began a nationwide strike after their union rejected the government's final offer for a new contract. Most of the 13,000 striking controllers defied the back-to-work order, and were dismissed by President Reagan on 5 August.

October 1982
A boycott was initiated by the Industrial Association of Machinists against Brown & Sharpe, a machine, precision, measuring and cutting tool manufacturer, headquartered in Rhode Island. The boycott was called after the firm refused to bargain in good faith (withdrawing previously negotiated clauses in the contract), and forced the union into an unwanted and bitter strike during which police sprayed pepper gas on some 800 IAM pickets at the company's North Kingston plant in early 1982. Three weeks later, a machinist narrowly escaped serious injury when a shot fired into the picket line hit his belt buckle. The National Labor Relations Board subsequently charged Brown & Sharpe with regressive bargaining, and of entering into negotiations with the express purpose of not reaching an agreement with the union.

6 October 1986
1,700 female flight attendants won an 18-year lawsuit (which included $37 million in damages) against United Arilines, which had fired them for getting married.

24 October 1987
The 35-member executive council of the AFL-CIO decided unanimously to readmit the 1.6-million member Teamsters Union to its ranks. The scandal-ridden union had been expelled from the federation in 1957. President Jackie Presser was awaiting trial at the time, and the U.S. Justice Department was considering removal of the union's leadership because of possible links to organized crime.

17 September 1989
Ninety-eight miners and a minister occupied the the Pittston Coal Company's Moss 3 preparation plant in Carbo, Virginia, beginning a year-long strike against Pittston Coal. While a month-long Soviet coal strike dominated U.S. news broadcasts, the year-long Pittston strike garnered almost no mainstream press coverage whatsoever.

Villa, I don't know where you went to school, but I certainly learned about these things in American History classes. Things have improved considerably, although there are still horrible and preventable accidents in mines. The child labor and terrible working conditions that Zidanie mentioned back at the end of the 19th century were I believe quite common in other industrialized countries as well. Some of these things still are happening today in third world countries. We have laws in the U.S. which prevent child labor and bad working conditions. The labor unions have helped to correct them, although some unions are corrupt.
As far as immigration attorneys go - there definitely are some skanky guys out there. My daughter-in-law and her sister have both spent a lot of money for which they basically received no service. Luckily, they eventually found an honest immigration lawyer. They both speak English quite well.

Zidanie, I tried clicking on the links you included and none of them worked.

Jean, This is a good book that I have had per molto tempo. Got the book and the book on tape of it.(CDs)

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a great book by James Loewen. It critically
examines twelve popular American history textbooks and concludes that textbook authors propagate factually false, eurocentric,
and mythologized views of history. In addition to critiquing the dominant historical themes presented in textbooks, Loewen
presents a number of his own historical themes that he says are ignored by traditional history textbooks. A new revised and
updated hardcover edition was released on April 1, 2008.

Really sorry ma'am, nothing evil behind this, I probably just made a mistake while copying them.
You can even try to go to those sites and those sections, and you'll find sources anyways. I'll try to fix it though, later tonight

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